The best bottle shops for natural wine

My good friends at Samuel Pepys in Northcote (disclaimer, we go way back) range some stellar Spanish wines, many leaning toward organic and biodynamic, thanks to the shop’s affiliation with Bomba Restaurant and Tapas Bar on Lonsdale Street. It’s also the retail hub for Hey Tomorrow, a company making 2L boxes of goon from the likes of Syrahmi, Mac Forbes and Lethbridge, with 50 per cent of profits supporting Australian farmers to reduce emissions and drawdown carbon.

Fairfield wine store Oak + Young has 20 ethically produced cleanskin wines on tap — take a full bottle home, drink the wine and bring the empty back for another round. Wines are all small-batch and vegan, ranging from local (an orange viognier from the Yarra Valley) to international, with a primitivo from the southern Italian region of Puglia. There are shelves and fridges stocked with sustainably farmed bottled, boxed and bagged wines, too.

South Bank’s Act of Wine is not your average bottle shop. They range wines from smaller creators with a focus is on sustainable methods of production. You'll find anything from funky natural wines (many of which are hard to find outside of a restaurant wine list) alongside a selection of artisan spirits and craft beer that lean organic. Looking for low/zero sulfur or additive-free wines? Check out their wide range of clearly marked bottles or ask the team to curate a collection for you.

Public Wine Shop is the very model of the modern-era wine bar. There’s soul spinning on the turntable, rows of wine bottles lining the brick wall and a communal table to rule them all. With award-winning sommelier Campbell Burton as its owner and an impressive quiver of natural, organic, oxidative and all-round minimally messed-with wines at the disposal of staff (including Sarah Fitzsimmons, co-founder of Hobart’s equally impressive Dier Makr), it could live and die on the booze alone.